Cry of Eagles (20 page)

Knowing there were no war parties in the vicinity allowed Falcon to keep Diablo on the trail, and he was making good time until the big stud raised his head and pointed his ears forward.

Falcon knew this meant Diablo had either heard or smelled something up ahead, so he quickly jerked the horse's head to the left and ran him up into heavy brush just off the trail.

He pulled his Winchester out of its saddle boot, levered a shell into the firing chamber, and waited. Before long, three riders came into view. Though they were being careful and were keeping the noise to a minimum, they didn't manage to spot Falcon in his hiding place.

Damn good thing I'm not one of Naiche's braves,
Falcon thought, and considered for a moment bursting out of hiding and scaring the bejesus out of the three men. He decided against it, for they might go off half-cocked and fire a weapon, warning Naiche someone was on the mountain near his campsite.

Falcon walked Diablo out into the open just as Hawk and the others came abreast of his position. “Howdy, boys,” he called, shoving his Winchester back into its boot.

Other than a quick jerk of his head as Falcon called out his greeting, Hawk managed to hide his surprise at Falcon's sudden appearance in the bushes next to the trail.

Meeks wasn't quite so calm, and managed to get his pistol half out of its holster before he recognized who was hailing them.

Franklin's response worried Falcon the most. The miner didn't move, and barely looked up as Falcon approached. The man appeared to Falcon to be almost despondent, as if he had something heavy on his mind more important than his own survival.

Falcon rode out into the middle of the path, cutting his eyes at Franklin and raising a questioning eyebrow to Hawk. The big man shrugged while making a disdainful face. He'd made it clear from the start that he had very little respect for either Franklin or Meeks.

“You men have any trouble in Tombstone?” Falcon asked, looking at Meeks to see what his reaction was.

“None to speak of,” replied. “We sent a wire to Fort Thomas requesting to speak with Colonel Grant or whoever was in charge of fighting the renegades.”

“What was the reply?”

Hawk spat a brown stream toward Diablo's hooves. “ 'Bout what you'd expect. The Colonel was busy at some social shindig, suckin' up to bigwigs from Washington, probably, an' the men out doin' the dirty work of chasin' Injuns wasn't in the fort right then.”

“So, how'd you leave it?” Falcon asked, irritated at having to drag it out of them word by word.

“We left a message for any real soldiers who wanted a chance to kill some redskins to meet us at noon tomorrow or the next day just below Indian Head Peak. Said we'd be waitin 'for 'em,” Hawk answered, puckering up to spit again.

Falcon pulled Diablo's head around and glared at Hawk. “Hawk, you spit on my horse and I'll make you eat that plug, you hear?” Falcon said in a low voice, letting the trapper know he wasn't going to take any more of his attitude.

Hawk grinned, and turned his head to spit to the side, as if he'd just be seeing how far Falcon could be pushed.

“Franklin, you look like a man with something stuck in his craw,” Falcon said, his eyes on Cal. “Why don't you spit it out so we'll all feel better?”

Cal crossed his hands on his saddle horn and leaned forward, an earnest look on his face. “I don't think I can take any more of this, boys.”

“Any more of what?” Hawk asked, an ugly sneer curling his lips.

“This butcherin' of Indians after they's dead.” He shook his head, his lips tight and pale. “I've killed enough to last me a while. I'm done with ridin' the vengeance trail, boys, an' I'm gonna light on back toward Tombstone.”

“What'll you do then, Cal?” Falcon asked, his voice soft and kind. He knew some of what Cal was going through, what any civilized man would go through doing what they'd done. He knew that if his Marie hadn't been butchered by renegade Apaches in the past, he would have had a hard time acting this way, too.

Franklin shrugged, looking back over his shoulder toward Tombstone. “First, I plan to sell some of my dust an' drink until I don't see those Injuns' faces in my sleep no more. Then I'll probably mosey on back to my claim and do a little more minin'.”

“Cal, you'd be wise to hole up in Tombstone until this Indian uprising is over,” Falcon said. “Those renegades have hit your place once. Nothing says they won't hit it again if you go back there.”

Franklin nodded. “We'll see. I don't have no firm plans just yet. I only know I got to get away from all this killin'.”

Falcon nudged Diablo forward until he was next to Franklin. He held out his hand. “Good luck to you, then, partner.”

Franklin gave a half-smile, “Thanks, Falcon. You watch your scalp-lock, you hear?”

He nodded at Hawk and Meeks, then turned his mount and put him in a slow lope toward town.

“Damn coward,” Hawk muttered.

“Hell, he ain't no coward,” Meeks said, looking at Franklin's back as he rode off. “He's the smart one of the bunch.”

“How about we make camp?” Falcon asked, his eyes searching for a suitable place. “I haven't eaten anything since yesterday, and I'm in dire need of some
cafecíto.
”

As they walked their horses up into the forest above the trail, he added, “Now, just where is this Indian Head Peak where we're supposed to meet the army tomorrow?”

* * *

Later that afternoon, Falcon left Hawk and Jasper Meeks at their camp and traveled back to where the Indians had their base camp. He wanted to see if Naiche had returned, and to see if any war parties were being formed.

He got to the precipice overlooking the camp just as the last wickiup was being dismantled, and found the women and children and warriors packed up and ready to move.

As the caravan of Indians pulled out of the valley and took a trail leading toward the southern edge of the Dragoons, where mountain slopes descended into flat desert, Falcon followed at a discreet distance.

He hoped Meeks and Hawk would have sense enough to wait for him at Indian Head Peak, along with the army. As soon as he found out where the Indians' new camp was going to be, he'd hightail it back to the meeting place.

The Indians, with Naiche in the lead, slowly wound their way south through the mountains, the trail descending toward the desert the farther south they traveled.

If they keep going like this,
Falcon thought,
they're going to be on the desert floor before long.

Just before the path turned and ran straight down to the desert floor, Naiche turned his people off and led them into a small, box canyon that couldn't be seen from more than a hundred yards away. The Indians at the rear of the group covered the entrance to the canyon with deadfall branches and tree limbs after the rest of the people had entered.

Damn,
Falcon thought,
if I hadn't seen them go in there, I'd never find the entrance to that canyon.
Even from the trail no more than thirty yards away, the entrance was camouflaged so well it was almost invisible.

No wonder they've managed to elude the army so easily,
Falcon thought.
They can disappear in these mountains like a rabbit in a briar patch.

He looked around and made a mental note marking the surrounding terrain so he could lead the army back to this spot, if they showed up tomorrow.

Before leaving, Falcon climbed to a ridge overlooking the valley below to take a last look. What he saw made him uneasy. The Indians were not erecting their wickiups, but were making what looked like a temporary camp. Wood was being gathered and cooking fires were being lighted, but there were no semi-permanent structures being put up. It looked to Falcon as if the Indians didn't plan to be here very long, possibly not even long enough for him to go and get the army and bring the soldiers back.

Now what to do? He had to decide whether to take a chance and go to Indian Head Peak and fetch the army, or to hang around here for a while longer to see just what Naiche's plans were. Falcon knew that if the Indians moved again without him following, they would once again disappear into the Dragoons, and it might be a long time before he would be lucky enough to find their camp again.

He pondered his choices as he sat and watched the Indian women cooking on their fires. It seemed to him he was always watching the Apaches eat while doing without food himself.

Dawn came slowly to the Apaches' camp hidden in a pocket canyon where a tiny pool offered rare water in the southernmost part of the Dragoons, the driest section of this mountain range where wild game and grass were as scarce as water. The canyon where they camped now was aptly named Wild Pig Springs, since only the desert-dwellingjavelina could find enough forage here to survive.

Retreating south from their Deer Springs hideout, Naiche and his followers would soon be forced to cross dangerous open desert flats to reach the Pedregosa Mountains that would take them to Mexico and the high Sierra Madres where Geronimo was said to be in hiding, raiding Mexican
rancheros
and villages for guns and horses and ammunition.
A retreat from the heart of the Dragoons had quickly become necessary as soon as Juh and Chokole returned with Cuchillo. The story of the bloody defeat and mutilation of Cuchillo and his warriors still rang in Naiche's ears after the wounded warrior and Chokole related what had happened at the north edge of the Dragoons.

Cuchillo lay on a moth-eaten army blanket, groaning, his head still bleeding, as was a deep gash in his right side. Naiche sat crosslegged beside him, asking questions. Chokole and Juh listened in silence. The women and warriors who were not stationed in the surrounding mountains as lookouts prepared the camp gear and livestock to move again, on orders given by Naiche after word of the one-sided battle with the four white-eyes came. Smoked mule and deer meat and staples stolen from Bisbee and the wagon train were being loaded onto horses as rapidly as possible. Some of the women filled waterskins to tie to the backs of stolen cavalry horses for what Naiche promised would be a difficult journey across the desert to reach the mountains in Mexico.

“These white men ... there are two who wear deerskins like the clothing worn by northern Indian tribes?” Naiche asked, more determined than ever to find out details about the men who were killing off his warriors a few at a time. He could never admit it to those around him, but only the dreaded Comanche to the east had proven to be worthy adversaries to Apache war parties, yet a new enemy with light skin was thinning the ranks of his fighting men.

“Yes,” Cuchillo answered weakly. “One is very tall, big, and he moves like a mountain cat, making no sound with his feet. I saw and heard nothing when he moved among the rocks. It is as if his feet do not touch the ground. He leaves no tracks. He kills with a knife, the longest knife I have ever seen, and the blade makes no noise when it opens the flesh of his enemies. It does not seem possible, and yet I have witnessed it with my own eyes. He kills our best warriors and no one hears a sound, or sees a shadow.”

A dark fear loomed larger in the back of Naiche's brain, a fear he dared not reveal to the others, for it would spread panic among his fighting men, and the women.
Is this man in buckskins not truly a man made of flesh and blood?
he wondered.
Could he be a Spirit warrior from one of the tribes in the cold country far to the north?
But the Apache were not at war with the Shoshones or the Utes or the Crow, so who
was
this white warrior? Who were the others with him, and why were they there, stalking Naiche's people? Why had they come to help the bluecoats make war on the Apache? And how could the tall warrior's skin be white if he was a spirit from another tribe? All the tribes known to the Apache were a dark, coppery color. These were questions without answers, troubling Naiche deeply as he questioned Cuchillo about the slayings.

One thing was clear ... this tall warrior, and even the others with him, killed their enemies in the manner of an Indian. They knew secrets only known to the shamans about the Land of Shadows, how to cut out an enemy's eyes to make him blind in the afterlife so he could not hunt buffalo or deer, take a wife, or ride a horse in the next world. And these strange white men took scalps, proof they were not white-eyes in spirit or training. Soldiers and white buffalo hunters did not take Apache scalps.

So who were these men?

Naiche worried that they might not be men at all, men of any known race living upon the face of Earth Mother. The tall one made no sounds and left no tracks, as a spirit warrior might. Naiche had never seen a spirit warrior ... he had only heard the stories—told by the old men of his tribe around council fires—of a day coming in the future when warriors from the Land of Shadows would return to Earth Mother in the form of flesh and bone to seek revenge against their enemies. But why were these light-skinned men entering the Dragoons enemies of the Apache? Were they spirits of the Comanches killed during the big plains wars so long ago, when Apaches battled the Comanche over hunting ground far to the east? All the Comanches Naiche had seen, including the most fearsome of all—the Kwahadie tribe known as the Antelope Eaters—were dark, like the Apache. The battles over the best hunting territory between the five Comanche tribes and the Apache bands had been fought more than thirty winters ago, and now there was an uneasy peace between the two lifelong enemies, since the white men came. These men were not Comanches . . . he was sure of it.

Naiche thought of a solution to the unrest among the people here at Wild Pig Springs, for signs of fear were everywhere on the faces of most of his followers. It would be better to put the blame for Cuchillo's failure on Cuchillo himself, calling him a coward, a man unfit to call himself an Apache. While this was not true—for Cuchillo was a born fighter with skills equal to any warrior in camp—if he were made to look foolish for costing the lives of the warriors he led to halt the four white-skinned invaders, the people would have less fear of an approaching enemy.

Naiche stood up. “Come! All of you!” he cried. “Hear what I have to tell you!”

Across the narrow canyon, warriors and women halted their preparations to walk toward Naiche and the place where Cuchillo lay on the blood-soaked army blanket.

Naiche waited for the others to arrive.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a question on Chokole's face. He would ignore it and carry out his plan, hoping Chokole would understand that what he was doing was necessary for the good of their people to keep them from fear, from losing their hope of freedom in the war with the bluecoats he had promised them. It seemed each day he was being reminded of the often hard choices a leader must make for the greater good of his followers. Being a chief of his people, like being a warrior, was not a job for the faint of heart.

Thirty warriors and women gathered around Naiche, and by the looks on their faces they expected some additional bit of grave news ... most had been shocked when they learned what had happened to Cuchillo and his war party when Chokole and Juh brought him back to Wild Pig Springs, his head shaved and bleeding, telling a tale about how all his warriors had been killed before a white man tied him to a wooden cross. It was enough to stir the worst fears of Naiche's Apaches, since they had never seen this new blood-crazed enemy.

“Hear me,” Naiche began. “My heart is heavy to say these words, but I must tell you why we are leaving this ancient place of refuge used by our forefathers. It is no longer safe here, and one of our own . . . an Apache brother, is at fault. He has given the white enemy a chance to kill us.”

A whisper of concern went around the assembled men and women, as Naiche knew it would. The suggestion that a traitor, or a coward, was in their midst would turn fear into blame for what had happened to the others.

“Who?” asked an old woman named Cusi, the second wife of Nana.

Naiche looked down at Cuchillo. “A man we all believed was filled with courage. Cuchillo took his warriors into a trap set by the killer white-eyes. Their lives were his responsibility as leader of the war party.”

“No!” Cuchillo protested, his voice thin with pain and loss of blood. “We covered . . . our tracks . . . and hid ourselves among the rocks very . . . carefully.”

“All the others are dead,” Naiche growled, reaching for a cavalryman's pistol taken during the attack at the ravine which was tucked into his belt, “except for you, Cuchillo. No Apache would allow this to happen to his brothers.”

“No!” Cuchillo cried again, his dark eyes fixed on the gun Naiche aimed down at him. “We covered our tracks. We hid among the rocks and brush as we were taught during our training as warriors.”

Juh backed away from the spot, but Chokole stood her ground with her gaze on Naiche.

“Do not kill him,” Chokole said, her voice soft, without inflection. “We need every warrior who can fight these white demons.”

“It is not enough,” Naiche told her. “The lives of our best fighting men must be spared from a poor leader who forgets what he has learned about the ways of the Apache.”

“Will you kill Cuchillo?” she asked.

“It is The Way. When a war leader costs the People the lives of his men, he must die.”

Chokole wisely backed away to stand beside Juh. She realized the futility of trying to change Naiche's mind once it was made up. She was a warrior, but she was still a woman, and must mind her place when their chief spoke.

Naiche knew he had his audience convinced of Cuchillo's incompetence.

“I send our brother, Cuchillo, to join his ancestors,” he said, cocking the hammer of the Colt. “May his spirit walk the dark places filled with sorrow for what he has done.”

Naiche pulled the trigger. The gunshot rang out, echoing off the walls of the canyon around Wild Pig Springs.

Cuchillo's body jerked, his spine arching when a bullet went through his heart. He trembled, blood bubbling from his mouth. Then his muscles relaxed, and he fell back on the blanket with a quiet groan.

* * *

In his hiding place on a ledge overlooking Wild Pig Springs canyon, Falcon sucked in his breath at the sight of Cuchillo's cold-blooded execution. In all of his travels, he had never once heard of an Apache killing a brother warrior. He realized Naiche must be extremely worried to take such a drastic step. Perhaps his campaign of terror was working even better than he had hoped.

* * *

In single file, the Apaches left Wild Pig Springs leading horses and mules laden with supplies for the arduous journey across the desert. At the front of the procession, Naiche rode one of the fresh cavalry horses stolen from the soldiers.

Juh rode beside him on one flank. Chokole kept her horse in check on the other flank, watching the mountains and passes for sign of the enemy.

Juh glanced over his shoulder. “The People are afraid now, Naiche,” he said.

Naiche understood their fear. For the first time in his life, he also feared an enemy. But as chief of the Chiricahua band, he could not allow his fear to show. “They are like the white man's sheep,” he said.

“Chokole says it was wrong to kill Cuchillo,” Juh went on in his constant monotone. “He fought the white-eyes with all his courage.”

“He led his men toward death,” Naiche answered, with anger he did not truly feel. “He was foolish. He was trained as an Apache warrior.”

Juh looked up at the sky, a clear sky without a trace of clouds. “These men who come . . . I have a bad feeling about them,” he said.

Naiche was irritated, even though he shared Juh's concern “You have become like an old woman. They are only men, mortal men.”

Juh's eyes glassed over for a moment. “I had a dream, a vision. In my dream, these whites were from another place where men do not die in battle.”

“These are the dreams of children,” Naiche assured him, with his own private doubts clouding his judgement. “All men die when a bullet or an arrow finds its mark. Stop talking like a woman, Juh. You have seen many battles in your lifetime. When did you ever encounter an enemy who would not bleed when your arrow or your bullet was true?”

Juh said nothing more, guiding his horse down a steep trail toward the desert floor at the southern end of the Dragoons, where they would be forced to cross open land to reach Mexico.

He knew his dreams were not those of children, but warnings given from the Spirits that had always protected the People—when they were wise enough to obey the warnings.

After all, was that not why young men went to the sweat lodge—to make themselves ready for guidance from the spirit world?

Juh sighed but kept his mouth shut, hoping in his heart Naiche would not regret ignoring the Spirits' advice.